Paducah, KY

One morning when we were walking along the streets of downtown Paducah, we came across a coffee shop and we decided to go in and get a couple espressos. It turned out the coffee shop - Etcetera2 (Squared) - was attached to a somewhat historic bakery - Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli. We had espresso and a couple pastries in the morning, then went back later on and had a couple of sandwiches for lunch.

Kirchhoff's Bakery has a history that stretches back to the early 1870's. Franz Kirchhoff had immigrated to the U.S. from Prussia and ended up in the river town of Paducah. Along with his young bride, Hannah, they opened a store that sold food stuff and dry goods to travelers up and down the Ohio River. In 1873, they decided to open a bakery offering fresh breads to the travelers and townsfolk. The Kirchhoff's used an Old World-style wood-fired oven to bake breads using family recipes that were handed down through generations. They lived above the bakery and when the boats whistles would sound along the river bank, Franz would haul his fresh baked bread down to the boat landing and sell them directly off his cart.

Franz and Hannah's son, Frank, would eventually take over the bakery and it grew in both size and in reputation for having some of the best baked goods in the region. Frank's son, Louis, then took over the business becoming the third generation of the family to run the place. In 1952, a devastating fire gutted the bakery. It was at that time that Louis Kirchhoff decided to walk away from the business. With the help of co-workers, Kirchhoff's Bakery was rebuilt and reopened. However, in 1957 the bakery was sold to a regional baking company and the business was eventually shut down. The building where the bakery used to be was used as warehouse space for a number of years after that.

After Louis Kirchhoff, Sr. sold the place, Louis, Jr. took a decidedly different path than baking - he graduated from Vanderbilt with a degree in engineering. Out of college, he worked for a couple of Paducah area companies before starting his own civil engineering consulting firm. In 1996, Louis, Jr's son, Reece, informed him that the old Kirchhoff's Bakery building was now in the hands of the City of Paducah. Along with Reece's sister, Ginny, the two talked their father into buying the building and rehabbing it in hopes of resurrecting the bakery. Ginny Kirchhoff, fresh out of college, went to Sullivan University in Louisville to get her professional baking degree. After extensive remodeling, the Kirchhoff's reopened the bakery in 1997. Ginny Kirchhoff was 23 years old - the same age her great-great grandfather was when he originally opened the bakery.

One of their first employees was Josh Ryan, a young man just out of high school. He had some restaurant experience, but knew little to nothing about baking. Ryan did a little bit of everything - he was the de facto carpenter, plumber, painter, lifter, sifter, and mechanic, all the while learning the art of baking under Ginny Kirchhoff. He eventually became the chief baker at Kirchhoff's and became a partner in the business with the Kirchhoff's.

Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli is located in the Market House Square area of downtown Paducah. (see map) But it was the quaint little coffee shop that adjoins the bakery - Etcetera2 - that brought us into the businesses that one Saturday morning.

Allen Rhodes, Jr. moved to Paducah during his junior year of high school in 1966 after his father, Allen Rhodes, Sr., had purchased a local Ford automobile dealership. The younger Rhodes later graduated from Southern Methodist with a degree in marketing and moved back to Paducah to help his father with the car dealership. One of the first things Allen, Jr. did was convince his father to look into getting the franchise rights to sell Honda cars which had started to gain a foothold across the nation in the early 70's. After that, Allen Rhodes, Jr. convinced his father to pursue BMW for a franchise.

Becoming a Chrysler and eventually a Hyundai dealer, the Rhodes worked side by side for 26 years before selling their dealerships (Chrysler/Hyundai and BMW/Honda) to employees. Allen Rhodes, Jr.'s wife, Johanna, was a teacher at the same high school that Rhodes graduated from - Tilghman High School. She convinced her husband to come to work at the school as sort of an "everyman" filling in where he was needed.

Rhodes loved that job, but after 10 years he wanted to do something else. Seeing a need for a little coffee shop in the LowerTown Arts District of Paducah, the Rhodes family (along with their daughter, Jean) opened Etcetera Coffee House on N. 6th St. in 2006 (see map) They featured organic and free trade coffees and teas, as well as bagels, yogurts and oatmeal on their limited food menu. Allen and Johanna Rhodes eventually moved above the coffee shop. (Allen Rhodes, Jr. is also a city commissioner (councilman) and mayor Pro-Tem for the city of Paducah.)

In 2010, the Rhodes' were approached by Josh Ryan and Ginny Kirchhoff-Elmore to have a second location as part of the bakery's in-house coffee bar. Two weeks later - after extensive renovations to the building - Etcetera2 (Squared) opened for business.

Actually, Etcetera2 is in the back of what is a clothing boutique next to Kirchhoff's Bakery. I don't know if Cindy wandered in because of the clothes or because she wanted an espresso. But we ended up getting a couple of the Cubano espressos - the beans were pressed with sugar. They were excellent.

After getting our Cubano espressos, we went over through the opening in the wall to Kirchhoff's Bakery. There we found a case full of all different types of pastries, cookies, cupcakes and rolls. In a refrigerated case along the wall, they had a number of artisan cheeses to choose from. By this time in the morning (around 10:30) they had run out of cinnamon rolls, much to my dismay, and they were also out of lemon bars. But they had an orange/raspberry scone that Cindy wanted and I ended up getting a surprisingly good piece of flaky and delicious baklava.

In the bakery, they had a couple racks of fresh baked breads near a prep area for orders. The smell of the fresh bread was absolutely fabulous. If it weren't for the distance (six hours between Paducah and home), and the fact that we were leaving the next day, we would have gotten a loaf of bread to take home.

After finishing our espresso and treats, we took some time walking along Paducah's historic riverfront. Looking across the Ohio River is Illinois. Just to the right in the panoramic shot above is the mouth of the Tennessee River. Beyond that is a large port that specializes in tugboat repairs. It was a cool, yet comfortable morning along the river and we lingered for a moment to take in the sights.

There's a long flood wall that protects Paducah from the Ohio River. (They had water marks on downtown buildings from previous floods that were well above our heads.) They have a number of murals depicting the history and events of Paducah over the years. It was similar to a flood wall mural we saw in Portsmouth, OH on a trip we took up the Ohio River a number of years ago.

After doing some shopping and hanging out around the downtown area, we ended up going back to Kirchhoff's to get a sandwich. When we were there earlier, we sat in their dining area having our espresso and eating the scone and baklava. We got to looking at the menu that they had for their deli and thought that it would be nice to come back and try a sandwich.

They had a myriad of sandwiches to choose from at Kirchhoff's Deli. They had both grilled deli sandwiches that included a grilled pimento cheese (made in house) and bacon sandwich, a tuna melt that sounded good, and a Cuban-sandwich that they said they made with their version of Cuban bread. I was leaning in that direction.

For classic deli sandwiches, they had selections such as a New York style corned beef and Swiss sandwich on housemade Jewish rye bread, a medium-rare roast beef sandwich with Swiss cheese on the Jewish rye bread, and a classic BLT served on Kirchhoff's famous "Big Boy" bread. (The picture above right is the logo for their "Big Boy" bread.)

When we went up to the counter to order and Cindy ordered a quarter of a muffuletta sandwich. The guy behind the counter said that they were out of the Italian round bread they make the muffulettas out of and wanted to know if it was OK that they make it with their sliced French bread. Cindy said that would be fine. She got a small side of their pasta salad to go with her sandwich.

When it was my turn to order, I asked the guy if the Cuban bread they had was truly the sweet tasting Cuban bread. He said, "Well, no. It's really not. It's basically the same French bread that we're going to make her sandwich out of." I quickly changed directions and went with the classic New Yorker - the corned beef and Swiss on Jewish rye topped with sliced red onions and a dijon mustard.

And I'm glad I got it. First of all, the Jewish rye bread was just outstanding. It was piled high with corned beef and although I was a bit worried that the sliced red onions and dijon mustard would overpower the taste of the sandwich. But with the great flavor from the bread and the excellent corned beef they used, it turned out the onions and mustard were a great compliment to the sandwich. This was a very good sandwich for 6 bucks and change.

Cindy's pseudo-muffuletta sandwich was pretty much the same thing as having one, only on lightly grilled sliced French bread. It was piled high with ham and salami topped with provolone cheese and an olive salad. She has had muffulettas before and she said that even with the French bread instead of the Italian round bread this was a good sandwich. And to top it off it was only $5 bucks. This was a very good value - a lot of food for the money, that's for sure.

First of all, we have to let you know that we really enjoyed the Cuban espresso from Etcetera2. It was so good that before we left Paducah the next morning we went to the original Etcetera in Lowertown to get a couple more to help boost us down the road toward home. Both places were great little coffee houses.

But the experience at Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli was very nice. Between the baked goods, the fresh breads and the excellent deli sandwiches, the people of Paducah have to count themselves lucky that the fifth generation of Kirchhoff's - as well as Josh Ryan - are keeping the family's baking legacy alive. The sandwiches we had were a great value and they tasted very good. For a lunch on a whim, Kirchhoff's Bakery and Deli was a great choice and one that we didn't regret.

My wife and I spent a night in Paducah, KY on our way home from our Florida vacation last year. We were sort of enamored with the downtown area with its shops and restaurants and we made a plan to go back to Paducah for a couple days at some point. When we planned our trip to and from the Great Smoky Mountains earlier this year, we booked a couple nights in Paducah to try a couple restaurants in the area. One place we passed by when we were walking around on our first visit was a little Italian restaurant - Cynthia's Ristorante. It looked quaint and interesting and we made a note to go to there on our next visit. Well, this was our next visit so we made reservations for two on a Friday night.

Bill Gardner grew up in Paducah around good cooks. His grandmother and his mother were good cooks and his aunt owned a catering business in the area. Bill went off to the University of Kentucky and started to work in a fine dining restaurant that featured upscale food served by waiters in tuxedos. It was there that Bill Gardner decided he wanted to be a chef.

Gardner eventually ended up in Nashville to work at a restaurant there and he met Cynthia who worked at the same restaurant. Bill told Cynthia of his dream of becoming a chef, and with her support and with the help of his old boss from Lexington he was accepted into the California Culinary Academy, a Le Cordon Bleu-owned school in San Francisco. After graduating there, Bill and Cynthia worked in restaurants in Georgia, Florida and Missouri.

Bill was supposed to spend a year in Italy working in an upscale restaurant and learning the art of Italian cuisine. But the long distance between Cynthia and Italy was too great for Bill to handle. He ended up coming back to the States, and two weeks later Cynthia and he were married. The Gardners moved back to Paducah to be near his aging mother and he decided to open a restaurant there. With the support of mentor chefs he'd worked with or studied under along the way, he had the confidence that he could make great food. The only question was - would the people of Paducah accept his European-style of cooking? Paducah was a fried food and barbecue kind of town and Bill knew that he would have an uphill climb to get people accept his type of cooking.

In 1993, the Gardners rented a small building in the historic Market House Square and opened Cynthia's Ristorante. The restaurant only had 12 tables, but business was good for the Gardner's. It was so good that when the larger space next door became available, they moved in there. That is the current location of Cynthia's Ristorante. (see map)

We made reservations at Cynthia's for 7:30 that particular Friday evening. We were greeted at the host stand just inside the door and shown to a linen-topped table in the middle of the restaurant and given menus. The space was elegant with a small bar up front. The light was very low in the place making it difficult to read the menu or to take good shots with the camera. There was an upstairs to Cynthia's and I don't know if that was for larger groups or for overflow dining. It may have been a little of both. Given that Paducah is not a big town, the locals seated at the bar and at tables near us were checking out the two strangers from out of town with quick glances in our direction. Actually, we thought it was pretty funny and somewhat understandable.

Our server for the evening, Adam, came over to greet us. He had a down-home demeanor and a quick wit. He saw me using my flashlight on my phone to read the menu in the darkened restaurant and he made a comment along the lines of, "You'd think we'd turn up the lights to let people see what they're eating. But we have to save money on electricity around here." We immediately liked him.

Bill Gardner specializes in making foods with the freshest ingredients using as much locally raised food and produce that he can get. The menu changes depending upon availability of products and they feature nightly specials. Cynthia's features a short, but respectable wine list with prices that I felt were tad high, but nothing outrageous. I got a glass of the Earthquake cabernet from the Micheal David winery outside of Lodi, CA. Cindy got a glass of the DeLoach chardonnay, one of our favorite wineries from the Russian River Valley of Northern California.

After sharing a Caesar's salad, Adam brought out the food we ordered that particular evening. Cindy got the grilled Prince Edward Island scallops placed on a bed of house-made Pappardelle pasta mixed together with an herbed cream sauce and sliced fresh mushrooms. I was sort of surprised she ordered this because she doesn't care for mushrooms all that much. But she's gotten to a point that if they're fresh and not out of a can she can tolerate them.

I contemplated getting chicken saltimbocca - an organically-raised chicken breast that's pounded flat, pan-fried and topped with sage and prosciutto and served over a bed of fettuccine noodles and finished with a mushroom/veal wine sauce. But one of the specials Adam told us about - the rigatoni mixed with Italian sausage in a tomato cream sauce with red pepper flakes - kept calling my name. I was torn about the two and Adam talked me into the rigatoni. "You can always come back and the chicken saltimbocca. It's a regular item on the menu," he said.

And I was not unhappy with the rigatoni. It had great flavor and enough spiciness to get my attention. It featured small chunks of spicy Italian sausage that tasted great. The tomato cream sauce was light and a great overall complement to the dish. This was simply an outstanding pasta offering.

Cindy couldn't rave enough about her PEI scallops and the pasta in the cream sauce. She let me have a bite of the pappardelle pasta with a couple fresh mushrooms slices and it was exquisite. We were both overly happy with what we got and I didn't regret not getting the chicken saltimbocca in the least.

After dinner, Adam enticed us with some of the dessert selections they featured at Cynthia's. We settled on the tiramisu. While the presentation was nice, the tiramisu was a little dry with an uneven taste to it. While it didn't detract from the scrumptious meal we had, it wasn't quite what we were looking for as a finish to our evening at Cynthia's.

While the dessert wasn't up to the level of the food, I can't find much to say bad - if anything - about our experience at Cynthia's Ristorante. About the only thing would be that it was pretty dark in there and they could brighten the lights in the dining room a notch or two without spoiling the aura of the place. Our entrees were excellent, the service was friendly, down-home and efficient, and the ambience and atmosphere of the restaurant was relaxed and peaceful - even with the locals continually stealing looks our way to see who the two strangers were. We were simply amazed that this type of meal was available in Paducah, KY. This was a meal that was worthy in any large city we've traveled to.

On our trip back from Florida earlier this year, we spent the night in Paducah, KY. I had been to Paducah a couple times to call on a dealer there, but nothing really ever materialized. After having dinner the night before at Doe's Eat Place in downtown Paducah (click here to see that entry), Cindy decided she wanted to drive back into the downtown area at daylight to see more of the very nice downtown area. We drove past a restaurant on a corner and Cindy said that she could use a little breakfast. Parking the car around the corner, we walked into the Gold Rush Cafe to see what it was all about.

Ken White was a native of Paducah who ventured to culinary school at Walt Disney World just outside of Orlando, FL. It was there that he met a German girl by the name of Anita who was also attending the culinary school. After going back to their respective homes, Ken began a "pen-pal" relationship with Anita. Even in this electronic world of e-mails, the two would hand-write letters back and forth.

Ken continued his pen-pal relationship with Anita while working at several downtown Paducah restaurants including Cynthia's Ristorante (one that we'll want to try when we make it back through Paducah at some point), and Ristorante di Fratelli. Ken eventually convinced Anita to move to the U.S. and they were soon married.

The Gold Rush Cafe had been in business in downtown Paducah since 1998. The opportunity arose for Ken and Anita to buy the place and they did just that nearly 3 years ago. In addition to the restaurant, the White's also have a thriving catering business.

And Ken White is also known for some ingenious foods including deep fried spaghetti, and "Redneck Sushi" which consists of chicken chunks stuffed with chopped jalapenos and Monterrey Jack cheese, then rolled in rice and bacon bits. He also has a Buffalo chicken chimichanga on the breakfast menu, as well as a chili relleno ranchero that features a cornbread waffle topped with eggs and stuffed with a housemade chicken chorizo sausage.

White is also somewhat locally famous for some of his burgers that he's come up with. He has an open-faced burger topped with carbonara, a maple peanut butter and pepper jelly burger, and this one that they actually had on display on the counter by the cash register - a fried mac and cheese burger where the buns are made out of deep fried macaroni and cheese. Uh... No thanks on that one.

Every Thursday is "German Thursday" at the Gold Rush Cafe with entrees coming from authentic German recipes Anita brought with her from her homeland. Dinner specials are available all through the week, as well.

There's two sides to the Gold Rush Cafe, the small area as you come in the corner front door, and an equally small room off to the side. That's where we were seated at a two-seater table. Things were cramped in the room, but it was comfortable enough.

(Pictured left - coming into the Gold Rush Cafe from the corner front door.)

We were greeted by our waitress, a somewhat scattered middle-aged lady who was having a tough time keeping up with all the customers in the dining room. We were given menus and took a look at some of the eclectic breakfast items that they feature at the Gold Rush Cafe. My eyes immediately stopped at the French toast waffles. They used to have a contest on Friday nights on Gold Rush Cafe's Facebook page where people would make suggestions for the "waffle-of-the-day" to be served on Saturdays. It's my guess that the French toast waffles came out of that contest.

Cindy was thinking of something a little more healthy than French toast waffles or pancakes and she found an omelet skillet mixed with spinach, chopped tomatoes and feta cheese with a hashbrown casserole and a housemade biscuit.

Our food came out to us and the French toast waffles were, well, interesting. They basically put three full slices of French toast on a waffle iron and turn them into waffles. I had asked for blueberries to go along with the French toast and our server forgot to bring them out. It took about another five minutes for her to bring back a small container of blueberries.

The taste was, well, also interesting. The French toast waffles had that caramelized taste of cinnamon and sugar with a crisp outer side. After a few bites I decided that I liked the taste. They were certainly unlike anything I've ever had for breakfast.

Cindy's omelet was chock full of chopped tomatoes and fresh spinach along with it oozing with feta cheese. She took a couple bites and said, "Oh, my God! These may be the best eggs I've ever had! It's like they just picked the tomatoes and the spinach out of the garden!"

She said her hashbrown casserole was also very good. It had hashbrowns mixed with cheese and (I believe she said) bacon. She offered me a bite, but I was getting full from the very rich and very good French toast waffles.

When we paid at the front counter, Anita White took our money. She asked how everything was and my wife couldn't stop raving about the omelet skillet she got. I told her that I got the French toast waffle and she asked how I liked it. After I told her that it was interesting, she asked, "Interesting, good or interesting, bad?"

I told her that it was interesting, good - just like their restaurant. The Gold Rush Cafe was one of those great little finds on the road. Eclectic and daring foods served in a small town setting are tough to find. When we get back to Paducah - and we will - we'll have to get breakfast, or possibly one of their burgers, at the Gold Rush Cafe.

On our way back from Florida a few weeks ago, I had planned on driving about nine hours straight through to Paducah, KY. I had only one motive and plan - to finally eat at Doe's Eat Place in Paducah. While Doe's now has franchised locations from their original Greenville, MS restaurant, the one in Paducah was started by - and still owned by - family members of the Signa family whose patriarch, Dominick "Big Doe" Signa, started the original Doe's Eat Place in 1941.

The Signa family immigrated from Sicily and eventually moved to Greenville in 1903. They opened a grocery store in a small building where the Signa family lived in the rear. Doe Signa was born in The grocery store run by Doe's father catered to the large number of black families in the area. The grocery store was doing pretty well up to the devastating Great Flood of 1927. The Mississippi River flooded at record levels that year driving thousands of families from their homes. Many of the families, mainly black families, migrated north to find jobs in the industrial Northern states. Business took a drastic turn for the worse at Signa's store and it was going to be a long recovery due to the upcoming Great Depression. It was then that Doe Signa decided that he needed to turn to nefarious means to provide for his family. He got himself a 40-barrel still and made moonshine whiskey, a practice he continued well after the end of Prohibition in 1933. It was said he eventually sold the still for $300 and Ford Model T.

In the late 30's, Doe Signa got a job working at a cafeteria at a nearby air base outside of Greenville and his wife, Mamie, was running the store that had a honkytonk in front that catered to black people. Doe somehow got hold of a recipe for tamales from one of the airmen he befriended. Doe gave it to his wife who tweaked it a bit. She improved upon the recipe and began to sell tamales out of the front part of the store in 1941. Fish and chili were other items Mamie and Doe Signa would make for their patrons.

Because of social issues in the 40's, white people didn't patronize Doe Signa's honkytonk. But a white doctor making his rounds one day stopped in to see Doe coming in through the back door. Feeling hungry, the doctor looked through the store for something to eat. He found a steak that Doe had in the meat counter and the doctor asked Doe if he would cook it for him. It was so good that the doctor would come back to Doe's when he was in the area on house calls. Word of mouth got around that Doe Signa made a damn fine steak and suddenly white professional people were going to the back door for steaks while blacks still got chili, tamales and fish in the front. It was sort of a reverse segregation at the time when most establishments didn't allow blacks in the front door.

The steakhouse restaurant grew in popularity and Doe and Mamie eventually closed the honkytonk in front to make the whole place a restaurant. Mamie Signa died in 1955, but Doe carried on with the help of his sons, Doe, Jr. (or Little Doe) and Charles. Big Doe Signa retired in 1974 handing the restaurant over to Little Doe and Charles. Charles eventually moved to Oxford, Mississippi and opened a Doe's Eat Place there (it closed in late 2007 after the landlord dramatically raised the rent) while Little Doe continued to run the one in Greenville. The brothers had a little bit of a rivalry with the homemade tamales that they still made from their momma's recipe - both declaring theirs were better than the other's.

Now, I haven't been able to fully ascertain when and why Charles Signa's son, Paul, ended up in Paducah, KY to open a Doe's Eat Place there as part of a downtown riverfront revitalization project. Paul worked for his father in the Oxford location in the mid-2000's, so I'm guessing that he possibly moved up to Paducah sometime around 2007 or 2008 to open what is now the only other Signa family owned Doe's Eat Place. Franchise locations have been around since the early 1990's in places like Little Rock, Fort Smith, Bentonville and Fayetteville, AR, Tulsa, OK and Baton Rouge, LA.

After checking into the hotel, I set the GPS to take us through Paducah to Doe's Eat Place. Downtown Paducah is a charming place for entertainment with a number of shops, bars and restaurants. We really liked it just driving and walking around that night and again the following morning. Cindy instantly fell in love with the downtown area.

We found a parking space on Broadway, just down the street from Doe's Eat Place, which is just a couple blocks from where the mouth of the Tennessee River spills into the Ohio River. (see map) It was around 8 p.m. when we walked through the front door into a bar area with a guy playing guitar to a small crowd of rather raucous - but in a fun way - people.

The hostess met us at a station inside the first of two dining areas at Doe's Eat Place. We were guided to an antique-style wooden table that had a serious leveling problem. After running to the bar to get some coasters, the hostess steadied our table with about a half dozen of the drink coasters. She dropped off a couple menus for us to look through.

Our server for the evening was a young lady by the name of Carson. In the southern tradition of naming a child after the mother's maiden name, I guessed that's how she got her name. But she told us that named after Carson McCullers, the Southern Gothic-style author famous for short stories and novels set in the deep South. Cindy's daughter was getting ready to have her second baby and was having trouble coming up with a name. I thought the name Carson for a girl was rather cool.

It had been a long day of driving for us and I needed a beer. I saw that they had Schlafly Pale Ale available. I was sort of surprised that they had Schlafly, the brewery out of St. Louis. Then I remembered that Schlafly contracted with a brewery out of Nashville to make and distribute Schlafly products in the Southeast. But then it dawned on me the next day that it's less than a three hour drive between Paducah and St. Louis. I only had just the one beer that evening because we switched to a Malbec wine that we shared for dinner.

As I said, Doe's Eat Place is famous for steaks and tamales. I figured we needed to get some tamales to start out. We ordered up a couple for us to get started.

The tamales were wrapped in corn husks and had a type of meat sauce filling. They were different from most tamales I've had in the past. The meat sauce wasn't all that spicy, but had a distinct flavor to it. They came with a chili sauce on the side. I didn't know the drill, but I guess you were supposed to put the chili on the tamales and eat them like that. On its own, the chili was meaty and had a little bite. Had I known that you were supposed to put the chili on top they may have helped with the overall taste of the tamales which I felt were just "OK".

Carson came out soon there after and told us that they were out of 1 1/2 lb. T-bone steaks and baked potatoes. I thought it was rather peculiar that they were out of baked potatoes by 8:30 in the evening considering that I saw a number of baked potatoes coming out of the kitchen and going past our table after she told us they were out of them. But that was all right.

They had a number of different sized steaks on the menu at Doe's including and up to a 4 lb. strip steak. The table next to us got a 3 lb. strip steak and four of the six people seated at the table carved meat from it in sort of a family-style fashion. I wanted to get a picture of the steak before they started in on it, but I didn't want to bother them.

The 1 1/2 pound T-bone was not a deal killer for me, either. I figured to go with a filet and they had a number of different sizes of those as well. I ended up ordering the 10 ounce filet - rare. I got some of their "world famous" French fries for a side. Cindy got the 10 ounce filet, too, only she got her's medium. She chose the vegetable medley for her side.

We both got salads with the house dressing. Asking Carson what the house dressing consisted of she said it was a mixture of oil, vinegar and garlic chunks. She had us at "garlic". I asked if they had crumbled blue cheese and she said they did. I asked her to throw some on top of mine. The salads were actually pretty good with the basic oil and vinegar, but the combination of the garlic and the blue cheese made the overall taste just excellent.

The steaks came out not long after we finished our salads. The steaks were in sort of an au jus sauce and served with oversized and heavy duty steak knives. Cindy's vegetable medley was pretty much non-descript while my "world famous" fries were crispy on the outside, but other than that they, too, were pretty basic French fries.

But the steaks were a completely different story. My steak was cooked perfectly with a cool and red center. The steak was juicy, flavorful and very tender. Along with the sauce on the plate - which was sort of a Worcestershire-based au jus - the steak was one of the better ones I've ever had. It was just out of this world.

Cindy and were stuffed after all that food and we decided to walk around downtown Paducah for awhile. We found a number of other interesting restaurants and a couple places that had live music including a place behind Doe's Eat Place where a couple guys were playing in an open courtyard. Even though we were stuffed, we ended up getting some ice cream at a place called the Ice Cream Factory which was part of a boutique hotel called the Fox Briar Inn. It was a nice capper to an evening of fine dining.

Doe's Eat Place was everything I hoped - and expected it - to be. It was a unique dining experience all the way around. The steaks were just excellent and I'd put Doe's up against some of the best Midwest and big city steakhouses that I've gone to over the years. We absolutely fell in love with Paducah during our short overnight visit and made a vow to come back at some point in the not-so-distant future. And I'm sure that Doe's Eat Place will be on our itinerary to try again.